Speaker 1: Good afternoon. Can everybody hear me? [crosstalk - - PDF document

A0050000 Page 1 of 46 Speaker 1: Good afternoon. Can everybody hear me? [crosstalk 00:00:12] Hello everyone. We're going to get started here and I'd like to welcome John Ross. He's the director of Animal Industry Division at Agriculture and Agri‐Food Canada and he's going to give us a presentation regarding the Animal Pedigree Act, which I'm sure everyone here today is interested in

• hearing. So we'll move right into that now. We've had quite a long break

so everybody's probably ready. Speaker 2: Just before John starts I want to ensure that everyone has seen Mary down here and has registered and has a name tag or whatever. The format for this afternoon will be the presentation by John and then we will be opening the floor quickly for everybody and anybody's questions. It's a fully opened floor, just so everybody knows. [crosstalk 00:01:17]

• Comments. Anything that you wish.

Speaker 1: You're free to speak your mind. Speaker 2:

• Exactly. We're going to give John somewhere between 20‐30 minutes if

there are any minutes and then if we take another two hours of our comments, he's got to live with it. J: Technically speaking, I'm only going to live with about an hour and a half

• f your comments because David and I are out of here for a flight

tomorrow so [crosstalk 00:01:49] Speaker 3: How do you start this? J: So as [advertising 00:01:53], John Ross works for the Department. Speaker 3: Is this on? J: I was thinking, Ron there, 40 years, I'm close. I've had 30 years of experience with the Animal Pedigree Act. Registered cattle at home. I have an interest, my family, in Jersey cattle. We have an opportunity in my job to work with individuals that have struggled with the Act over

• time. Dave Bailey there earlier and I've read Percheron papers of [bears

00:02:22] and trying to figure out which black Percheron belonged to which black Percheron paper. Refereed debates between associations and thought the department had lost its mind, on several occasions relative to the Animal Pedigree Act. Provide some answers and oversight to the bulk of the work that's done in the department [inaudible 00:02:40] of course by David and you'll see him all the time. But in 30

A0050000 Page 2 of 46 years I've never been here at the annual general meeting of Livestock Records. And it's curious. I though we should talk about why we're here. Why I'm here. Speaker 4: Can you use the mic, please? J: Hopefully is. Is that better? Speaker 4: You got to be closer to it for [home study 00:03:08]. J: Certainly the discussion started and I'll try to pick up a bit here. If I get too loud, gesture. I don't want to be screaming. Certainly the discussion started last fall and I had the opportunity to visit with a few folks that I knew were involved in the animal pedigree business and the marketing of genetics, just to get a sense of, "If the Department wanted to open a discussion on repealing and/or amending the Act, what sorts of things would we have to think about?" It was the kind of discussion that we have all the time where we [visit‐in 00:03:42] folks from the hall and off the corner of the table at a meeting we were

• at. We're trying to get a sense of just the scope of the problem. What

sorts of things do we have to address if we're going to open a discussion. I've got some great feedback and all of a sudden my [glaborate proof 00:04:00] took the time to visit and get back to me [inaudible 00:04:02]. Well John if you guys go down this road, you're going to need to think about these things. We took that advice. We went back and thought about it a little bit and in the interim, lots of concern got expressed from folks that thought maybe that was the consultation. A Canada standing in the hallway visiting with half a dozen people and that we're going to make decisions right away. Most concerns were expressed through the Ministry in a number of formats, calls and such like. So I wanted to go through a number of things here today to let you know where we are on this file. This is [gonna 00:04:42] number of questions: what, when, why, who. Those sorts of things. What are you guys at the Department talking about? What are the possibilities? Is it like a repeal and that's it? Or is there other discussions in play here? Now I want to open a dialogue on this issue. We're finally at the stage where, we expected to be here a month ago, where we can open a

A0050000 Page 3 of 46 discussion with the stakeholders for the Act and see where they're at and what it is we need to talk about, what the options are, and how we might go at that. The last thing, I'm going to be looking for some advice from you folks on how to move forward. [Pick‐er‐ing 00:05:18] how do we consult going forward? How do we reach out a little further than this hotel room in Calgary? We have some thoughts, but we'd be looking for some advice from the audience. The first question that comes up is, "Have you guys got nothing else to do?" Why are we even having this discussion? What's the point? And it comes out of three or four areas that are of importance in the Government of Canada. Certainly if you see the economic agenda of the current government, and if you looked at the Throne speech or read the Throne speech, you'll find in there a drive to create jobs and

• pportunities for Canadians. It is a focus of the government. And in that,

they talk about reducing the size and cost of government. There's two things in play there. One is the cost driven by a fiscal

• problem. Not enough money, run a deficit. And the second one is a

philosophy that perhaps the Government of Canada is involved in too many things. People often express, "You know, the government's involved in everything." We fill out too many forms. In our country, in Ottawa, you can drive up and down the road and you'll see a few gate signs that have "Back off" [gar‐pen 00:06:45] on them. It's a push back from landowners that are saying, "Listen. Too much government in my life." The Government of Canada's current question, "Are we involved in everything that we need to be involved in, or should we be involved in everything that we are in?" Secondly, there's a discussion in play about modernizing legislation. For moving it from prescriptive to enabling or outcome‐based. If you've been at any meetings with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, they are moving forward with a Safe Foods For Canadians Act, a large, large discussion in play about how you move to outcome‐based regulation [crosstalk 00:07:32] framework. And we'll talk about that for a little bit. As part of that, Industry Canada recently renewed its not Not‐for‐profit Corporations Act, purpose built to modernize an act that had been in place for a number of years. As I mentioned as well, we have an issue about the cost of government, the size of government. The other concern we have is the government focusing its resources on the right area. If in my group we choose to spend money on the Animal Pedigree Act, it's enforcement, that's money that's not available to deal with animal care, animal welfare, animal biotechnology, and 1,000 other

A0050000 Page 4 of 46 issues you can think of in the agriculture sector. We're saying that the investment of Ag Canada's time in that area is important and we should keep doing it. [inaudible 00:08:25] check on that. Then, last but not least, the Animal Pedigree Act was last looked at in 1988. That's 25 years ago. Lots of change in the livestock industry, in the dog industry, in the last 25

• years. Is the Act still meeting the needs of the the breeders that are

involved in that? So right there, those four items, are why we're having the discussion at all. When the [zippers 00:08:53] stay home, do something else. This is why the discussion's on the table today. Sometimes people say, "That's just prescriptive nature stuff, John. That's kind of government talk, whatever." What do you mean? This is from the Act, Section 60. It talks about, "Every association shall do." Associations shall do this. There's no choice. If you look at Part B, you can get, after each annual meeting, a copy of the annual report, including an audited financial statement. That's to be sent to the Minister. Not a problem in

• here. [Ons 00:09:23] got that in order. It's going to come along, good
• timing. We'll have it. Duly reported. But of the smaller breed association,

how many of them have an audited financial statement, or can afford it? Yet, in the Act, you're going to send it to me. There's no choice. As a practical matter, we worked around that a little bit. According to the Act, you shall send me an audited financial statement. You contrast that with the Not‐for‐profit Corporations Act, depends on your size is whether you actually have to have a fully audited financial statement and present it. But this is an example of the prescriptive nature that we talked about. So what are we doing in the short run? Well we're talking to folks. I'm here today. We're going to probably come back to Calgary in May. Michael's working on that. Have a sit down again. Probably one or two meetings we get back depending on how many folks expressed an interest in the discussion. We'll be going down to Guelph although that's now changed to Brantford. We'll be down there again this month to talk to dairy breeds about potential changes to the Act and where we're

• going. We'd like to do a bit of a webinar to get this out so folks that can't

travel have an opportunity to understand what we're talking about and when, how they can input. So we'll be going forward with those sorts of

• discussions. We'll be taking the results of those and crafting a

recommendation for Minister Ritz for his consideration as to which way he'd like to go based on what we've heard so far. So our intent is to write up a recommendation for the Minister. We've been out, we've visited. Here's what we're hearing. Here's the recommendation. What's your direction?

A0050000 Page 5 of 46 However, this is of some concern to folks, was that the Animal Pedigree Act would disappear overnight and the Livestock Records, for example, which was created under the Act, would cease to exist. Obviously things don't disappear overnight, particularly when we're talking about legislation in the government. It has to go to parliament. It has to be considered by parliament. It takes time to get it there. Can't imagine how many lawyers are involved in this exercise, once we decide to go. There is a lot of time involved and there a recognition that people would have time to transition. So, should we actually choose to repeal the Act at the end of the day and after the discussion that's a decision to go, there needs to be time for people to reincorporate under other legislation. Whether it's the federal Not‐for‐profit Corporations Act or perhaps there's some provincial legislation that's a little bit more useful. People would need time to transition in that area. All that's to say that if we were to make a decision today, it still would take some time before we could actually implement it. Now what's our role in the animal breeding world? What does Ag Canada play in this? What do we do? We have some money in genomics, either in researchers or cash money that would provide folks for projects and/or

• groups. David Bailey is here from Genome Canada. We're a big funder
• there. We do genetic improvement evaluation programs. David spoke

about those back in the day, [inaudible 00:13:02] some projects now. Back in '95 we privatized. The federal government got out of its role in the old ROP programs. The first time I ever met Bob Church down at his house in [simmond‐kitchen 00:13:14], not Bob Church, Bob Preston, trying to get through his records, for the ROB beef program. Back in '95 we did that. We were active in the fairs and exhibitions, back in the day. We backed out of those things but we still fund. Folks may be aware of the [Grow safe 00:13:32]. We've got a project using that technology at our research station in Napan. Doing some work there with the Maritime Beef Council. We're actively involved in animal health, from pig policy issues that are being considered by the National Farmed Animal Health and Welfare Council, through to doing some work with producers in the Riding Mountain National Park area. I'm up there in a couple weeks trying to work through some issues around tuberculosis. Market access, obviously, a big issue for the Government of Canada so

• Mr. Ritz, David mentioned, he's been involved in some discussions on
• trade. Huge issue probably occupies 60‐70% of the resources at our
• branch. Large focus there. Market development, and I know there's many

here benefited over the years of the the market development funding

A0050000 Page 6 of 46 that comes out of the Department of Agriculture. That funding's still there and still being put to good use. Canadian animal genetics research program. David mentioned this morning, there's an opportunity to preserve some of these genetics that might not be so useful right now but you never know down the road. And, last but not least, the Animal Pedigree Act. So we have a fair range

• f involvement across the animal breeding sector, in the Department.

I mentioned before and it's come up in the discussions this morning. We've had this act for over 100 years. Back in 1900 some adjustments made to put in the Livestock Pedigree Act, 1906. 1988 was replaced with the Animal Pedigree Act but hasn't been aggressively looked at in the 25 years since. But a big fixture in the industry over time. Notwithstanding that 100 year history its purposes have remained largely the same. It's around breed improvement, it's around protecting people that sell and purchase animals, and it's by providing for associations to facilitate that

• process. That's been fundamental in the Act for over 100 years.

Many of you are aware the APA provides for a legal framework for associations and registries. Provides exclusive authority to represent breeders within Canada, but also breeders across Canada. You can understand, from time to time, we've had more than a few discussions with people who'd like to establish an association, whether they actually do represent the breeders across Canada, but a fundamental part of the

• Act. The buyer‐seller protections are there and of course it does make for

the establishment of Livestock Records, is identified in the Act itself. In terms of our administration of the Act, normally limited to a few specific areas. Obviously, the [improvals 00:16:36] for articles of incorporation and by‐laws. When by‐law amendments come in they have to be approved through the Department. We provide assistance, and that's a royal we, by the way. Most of this work being done by David. Providing assistance on breeding programs to help folks advance to pick their goals that they might want to achieve. Provide advice on the

• peration of registries. See a lot of them over time and we have an
• pportunity to input into how others are being managed.

Largely complaint‐based oversight and dispute resolution exercise for us. We're not actively auditing. We don't have an active audit program. We don't come out and sit down, go through registries to see how things are

• perating, whether they're being well done or not. No evaluation of that

unless we run into a complaint.

A0050000 Page 7 of 46 And not last, but the enforcement of the Act, ultimately, if there is a problem, tends to [lie 00:17:36] to the RCMP. Of course, if you can think about your basic RCMP constable and the duties he has during the day, then what's the priorities in his world? Is he going to drive a long way to resolve a dispute between a couple of dog breeders? Is it on the priority list? In terms of the Act itself and repealing the Act, it sparked a great deal of concern in the country, particularly in the Livestock Records and its membership took the opportunity to write the Minister. Took the

• pportunity to write a number of other MP's and conveyed concerns.

One of the things that came up: fragmentation of the existing breed

• associations. So, without the Act, some of these existing associations

would blow apart. That need to pull [ahead 00:18:26] people together would be put at risk. A loss of the Canadian approach in breeding. This is unique to Canada. We're different in Canada. It's a different approach here and we would lose it if the Act were to be repealed. A loss of their actual markets, as a result of that. Those pedigrees that come out of Canada, recognized by actual buyers, and valued. Folks wrote that it would have a tremendous negative impact on small or rare breeds, that without they Act they would likely be the first ones to fall apart. A loss of guidance in managing breed genetics. The consumer protection angle: people who buy registered animals and some protections under the Act. The species using the Livestock Records registry service would be particularly negatively affected. That associations would need to

• reincorporate. They would have to transition to another group. There's

costs and aggravation associated with that and that's a problem that would have to be figured out. What came up this morning, there was a discussion about, "Are these just unique to Livestock Records folk, to the members of Livestock Records." The answer is, "No, they're not." When I had the discussion with a few of the folks involved, these are the things that came up right away. I had the

• pportunity to have lunch with Jim and I've been thinking about that with

the export of live hogs. John, this is going to have an effect on the

• pedigrees. The importance of those pedigrees we take to the export

market, this is going to hurt our export market. These themes, that are listed out here, are not unique to the Livestock records membership. They're the things that are going to be expressed when we sit down with

A0050000 Page 8 of 46 the beef breeds, when we sit down with the dairy breeds. When we sit down with whomever, these things are going to come up. But the question that we have, and the question I'd like to explore ‐ and there are a few of these during the presentation, and we can come back to them after we're done here, and appreciate your thoughts and your views on them ‐ is, "Can you achieve those outcomes at coordinated breeding, high value animals, all that good stuff, can you get those through other means other than federal legislation?" If we look around at the world, a lot of our competitors and our customers in those markets, seem to be competitors and customers in those markets without benefit

• f the Animal Pedigree Act. Not all of the breeding we do in this country

has been successful. We can all think of examples of where we got up on the wrong crack and maybe bred some animals that we shouldn't have bred. You can do genetic improvement, genetic evaluation outside of the Act and there are some groups that have been very successful at it. BeefBooster, based out of Alberta. The poultry industry. Extraordinary genetic progress. Never under the Act. Some of these breeding companies that we see on the hog side of the business, BIC, making progress outside of legislation. So can we achieve these outcomes expressed under the Act, and the benefits that we see from the Act, can we get at those through other means? We talked about the certification and the importance of it, yet we exchange genetics with markets like the United States, on a virtual daily

• basis. Breed associations in Canada have figured out how to approve

their counterpart registries in other markets that aren't governed by federal legislation. It is possible to do some of this stuff. In terms of the government certification and that importance of a government‐certified pedigree as we go to whatever markets, domestic

• r foreign. Can you achieve that in another manner? For example, could

we put in place an voluntary certification program, such that if a breed association thought it was important to have that government stamp, they could come to the government and say, "well listen, we'd like to run through the certification process with you and become certified." We could recognize it that way outside of legislation. The Livestock Records Corporation has a unique relationship under the

• Act. It's a little different than the other associations that we recognize.

It's actually created under the Act. It has its own sections. Its purpose is specified under the Act. The establishment of the General Stud and Herd

A0050000 Page 9 of 46 Book is made under the Act, and it says Livestock Record, you're the guys that are going to get it. It specifies a board of directors. There's going to be seven of them and the Ministry of Agriculture gets to appoint one. It is

• ne of three services, and only three, that are available to breeders in
• Canada. You can have your registry done in your own breed association,

you can ask another association, recognized under the Act, to manage your registry, or you can use Livestock Records. What is breeders from a particular breed, those are your three choices. There are no more. That prescriptive nature that I spoke about earlier also extends into Livestock Records. It talks about the purpose of the corporation. It's to perform services for and behalf of its members. That's it, that's all. The members are [attention‐al 00:24:26] members whose eligible to be in the corporation breeds recognized by the Minister of Agriculture. Evolving or

• extinct. Then of course, the service that can be provided to the smaller

groups. The specificity there is a little bit interesting. If you look at the services that are provided by the Livestock Records Corporation, for members, for groups that are not members, how does that square with the Act? When registration services are provided from American groups, how does that work? Doesn't seem to be permitted under the Act, and yet there it is, happening today. The board of directors of the Corporation, as I mentioned before, there are 37 of them. Your group grew to 250 members, 7 might not be a good number. But changing that requires the

• pening of an Act in parliament and the acceptance. It's a complicated
• process. Specifying the exact of what your board makeup would be.

So is legislation really the best way to do this? We limit Livestock Records from pursuing other opportunities. Recognized worldwide, with some discussion this morning, about Livestock Records and the service that can be provided. Could you go and sell that service elsewhere? Well, not

• really. Prohibited under the Act. Or not permitted under the Act

[inaudible 00:26:05]. As I mentioned before, changing the Act, or just making changes to modernize your business, would require the Act going to parliament to be opened and modified. This is an extraordinary process for us. For those of you that are involved in regulatory change, it takes a long time. Opening an act is more work than that. Last but not least, we have a provision in the Act that says, "The Minister

• f Agriculture will nominate a board member." Historically that's been

the Chief Registration Officers. David has been going for the last number

A0050000 Page 10 of 46

• f years. Wholly contrary to the policy of the Department right now,

which is that departmental staff will not sit on boards. The reason, of course, is that, as employees of the Crown, have sworn a duty to the Crown and that sometimes is being conflict to your duties as a member of the board. We can't fill that. This is in conflict and, certainly in the case of David, if we were to undertake an investigation or acquire any of the

• perations of Livestock Records, we received a complaint ‐ unlikely, but

could happen ‐ the guy that we would want to do it, the guy with all the expertise, is on the board. Wouldn't work well for us. These are the things that come up. Are there other ways for Livestock Records to function and provide better service to its membership given the limitations that our outlined in the Act? Again, we're back to these outcomes. So for breeders in Canada that I mentioned to you, that you are eligible to register through three different venues, but not four. The dairy breeds had a discussion about amalgamating the Canadian Diary Network with Holstein Canada, and

• ne of the advantages of that was that the Canadian Dairy Network could

handle the pedigrees. All of the information is in the Dairy Network. They are the genetic evaluation business, they are fanatical about pedigrees. They need that information in order to drive the information that comes

• ut of that system. All of that information is there. The dairy breeds

cannot use it. They are obligated to maintain their own registries. Couldn't use that one. The last item that I want to talk about a little bit today as we go along is cost recovery. Folks have written and explained to us the value of individual breeders of the Animal Pedigree Act and what it brings forward, and how they are able to capitalize on that value in the markets and they get a higher return for their animals. Should we be cost recovering the service, as it is a service that is provided directly to benefit, not the public at large, but, in fact, a rather contained group of purebred breeders? So we want to open a discussion around that and, particularly around that, what sort of structure do we use to gather up a cost recovery fee? Is there a flat fee per association? Is it by percentage

• f [inaudible 00:29:24] animals registered, so a dollar a head or whatever
• nce you get check‐off? What would be the way to proceed on cost

recovery, given that the benefit of the Act accrue to a very distinct group

• f Canadians?

Of course, if we're going to go forward in that direction, around cost recovery, what would be the service level expectation of the industry?

A0050000 Page 11 of 46 Particularly if I'm going to charge you $10 to get your by‐laws approved, you might expect that would happen in a timely manner. What is that expectation of service that would come forward and be [inaudible 00:30:02] cost recovery option? In terms of immediate next steps, here's where we are. We are in the midst of consulting with folks that have a view and have experience and have an understanding of the Act and what it does and how it might be

• improved. We're going to be developing a recommendation for Mr. Ritz,

for his consideration in a potential "round two", if you will, of

• consultations. But we want to encourage people to take part in the
• discussion. To participate. To send in thoughts and ideas.

What I really would like is if folks could demonstrate some of these

• things. We talked about breed associations would fragment. Do we have

some examples of where that's happened? Can we point to a few of them, and use that. When we talk about the value of the certificates, do we have a sense of what that monetary value is? $10 a head? $100 a head? $1000 a head? What is actually the value? So if we could drive that discussion and try to back it up with good concrete examples of where we're at, that would be helpful. Looking for comments and questions. I'm looking to get a good discussion here this afternoon. I tried not to take up the entire day with a long presentation, just to get the ball rolling here. But if you've got them, here's my email address and there's my phone number. I'm certainly connected to the email all the time. Phone number you might have a harder chance to get a hold of me, but I would encourage people to contact us directly and let us know. So I'll leave it at that. I know there's questions and I'd be happy to take them and I'm hoping that after we get through the questions on clarification, "What did you mean by when you said that, John," we could enter into some of these discussion items that I've talked about through the course of the presentation. If you want, we can bring those slides up and deal with them one at a time. I'll leave it to your advice on how you'd like to go from here. But certainly if you have questions of clarifications that might be the place to start and then we can go from there. Speaker 5: I would like to ask the first question. I'm going to take advantage of my

• position. My question is, your introduction was that the government

shouldn't really be involved. It should be industry. But it seems to me that, originally, the whole idea of our industry in Canada was driven by

A0050000 Page 12 of 46 the livestock producers. It is over 100 years old but it's still serving us

• today. So, since it was originally designed by the industry and still serving

the industry, and you don't think government should be involved, is this coming from the government or is this coming from the industry, this

• change. Is this driven by the government or is this driven by industry?

J: It comes back to that first slide. The government hasn't made up its mind whether it needs to be involved or not. That's kind of why we're out here having to talk about it as opposed to having a discussion about what we're going to do. We're having a discussion of "What are the options that we could do and what's the best way to move forward." We've not made up our mind. Speaker 5: The question was is it government‐driven or industry‐driven? This seems to be coming from the government. J: I [present 00:33:30], by the way, there is not been a soul that I'm aware

• f ‐ when I have to think about it there might be one ‐who suggested that

government aught to get out of this business. There's been no driver of that, that I'm aware of at all. However, as I mentioned before, the Government of Canada is reviewing all of its operations and asking that question, "Do we need to stay in this business?" What's the role for us to be here and should we stay? It's a [inaudible 00:33:59] question if you throw it out there, what would be the answer to that? We're going to figure out over time here. Obviously we have those other dynamics in play around the fiscal pressure of, we don't have much money as we used to and manifest itself in my own staff here. Over the last six months we've laid off four people that are no longer working for us. So fiscal

• pressure. There's also the pressure of, "Are we spending our dollars on

the right priorities?" If the money's spent here, it can't be spent somewhere else. Have we thought through that? Speaker 6: What is the cost of the government for running the Act? J: All in, we're probably [inaudible 00:34:41] done the formal analysis. $200,000? Speaker 6: I just looked up a statistic, on your website actually. I looked the last five years of the value of pedigreed animals bought or sold in Canada and imported or exported, and the average is $250 million over the last 3‐4

• years. So for 200,000 we have a system that's really working beautifully,

in our mind, I think the mind of the collective group here. For 200, 250 million is the low‐ball estimate of the value of those animals imported,

A0050000 Page 13 of 46 exported, received. That's all species. You said, for an economic driver I think that the leverage value... You can turn this around the other way and look at the value the government gets for a $200,000 investment. It's a huge, it's a wonderful

• story. I think the Minister would love to hear this story and how

beneficial this Live Animal Pedigree Act is doing for Canada. It's a unique

• pportunity. I have a lot of comments but‐

J: I'm hoping that we get along here and folks will take the opportunity to send us that information and perhaps demonstrate that, but the other question that's in play... In order to drive discussion here I'm not just going to say yes to everything you have, but I look to the United States and I see the value of their genetic exports and I know where it's going. I know who buys from

• who. And they manage to get that done without an Act.

Speaker 6: They're also ten times bigger. J: They are, but when we look at that exchange of genetics, which is really that's what you're talking about, what the value of that is. The idea being that the Act would give us an advantage. We need to be able to determine that because the contrast of that‐ There are other countries out there ‐ Australia, New Zealand, UK ‐ that manage to get along here without federal oversight. So when you're thinking about sending me the information... Again, I'm hoping you do and you need to document that stuff (cough) [inaudible 00:36:48] can build a case. If you think of all the multipliers, David, 200,000 on 200 million in exports... 200,000 on a $3.5 billion spend by the Government of Canada, or Agriculture Canada, those ratios get pretty [tying 00:37:02]. Step back [inaudible 00:37:04]. Speaker 7: You were saying about the United States and their genetics. How accurate is the information that they put forward in the United States? I know of businesses, just through our own association, through our own breed, that things have been manipulated down there and we are left with the consequences. So I'm questioning how accurate is there system down there. I don't think it is. Another question, and I've got a bunch of them here, you said as part of realigning or whatever, is making passing it on to the provinces. Well

A0050000 Page 14 of 46 each province, if you look at health systems and all this other stuff, they have their own little way of doing things and I don't want to run down Quebec, but the Quebec parts just do different [gover 00:37:59] also. This is a cohesive way of keeping everything the same across Canada and I would think that it wouldn't work very well if we handed off to provinces. Also, that 200,000 you talked about. That would get away from the federal government and it would be handed over tot hte provincial governments to fund, if that happens. The controversy in Alberta that Alison Redford spent $25,000 going to Africa. Well what did it cost Prime Minister Harper to fly to Africa? [inaudible 00:38:44]. J: Just some clarification on the provincial. I don't think that it'd be a case of a provincial government bringing in their own Animal Pedigree Acts, if you will. The point I had hoped to make was that, within each province there are not‐for‐profit corporation laws that would enable you to incorporate your registry in whatever province suited you. That doesn't mean you can't have national reach. It just means you're incorporated in Alberta, for instance, because that legislation was a little easier to get after, for whatever reason. But it doesn't limit you to having a national approach so you can still have Livestock Records Association incorporated under Alberta legislation, providing service to members across Canada. It's not limiting that way. I don't expect for a minute that the province of Saskatchewan‐ They picked up rabies here in the last week and [inaudible 00:39:38] around that. The intent is not that a provincial government will pick it up. The question is whether a breed association would want to take advantage of provincial legislation and reincorporate in that area. Chris? Speaker 8: I have a couple of comments first. Will a copy of this presentation be available, or some document that is a reference document to which responses can be fairly specific to‐ J: The simplest way will be to email it to you. Ron, you can blow it up on your website? Speaker 9: Sure, yeah. J: I've got a French version so... Speaker 8: That would be helpful in terms of...

A0050000 Page 15 of 46 We can't go through today to every specific‐ J: No. Speaker 8: ‐along that point. I would certainly not be the first person to expect, if not suspect, that the APA is perfect. J: Just the administrators. Speaker 8:

• Yeah. The administrators are perfect. Just in specific reference to your

issue on the United States, as an example, we would love to look at it. It's an example of what not to do in our industry and the more your raise that, that's probably not going to work in your favor because, in our industry, we have 20+ associations registering, basically, the same horse. Competitive horse. This is just the tip of the iceberg because new ones kept getting formed all the time. What you have is, in a strange way, Canadian associations as large, or larger than the ones in the US, simply because they can't get together enough. If they were able to get together they would be significant players in the world, but they're not. They have just simply been colonized by European associations. So that's a perfect example for us and what could happen. It's not that Canadians are nicer and happier to work together than the Americans. We know that when you have people who are disgruntled with a particular association and if they had the option to go outside and form another association, you were having the exact same situation. Now, when you're bringing genetics from the US, we specifically exclude the US organizations from being on the automatic list like our European

• counterpart. We have to look, not only at the pedigree, but at the

practices to see if those practices are consistent with our standards, which we then made to be international [inaudible 00:42:03]. It would be a problem and I would hate to see ourselves fall into that category. J: These are the kind of examples that we're looking for. You take an

• pportunity to fire off an email, those are the things you want to bring

forward and highlight so that we can take advantage of them. We can actually point at it and say, "Well, look. This is that." Speaker 10: I actually had pretty much the same thing. I'm from the dairy industry and you mentioned New Zealand, Australia. They de‐regulated several years ago. Since then they host species like they went two or more herd books with different standards. In the dairy sector, like that, cost big time in the [seals 00:42:51]. It's kind of the same thing. As a breed association,

A0050000 Page 16 of 46 [right 00:42:58] registering is an [inaudible 00:42:59] part of the income. In some breeds [crosstalk 00:43:04]. Speaker 11: Just a couple questions. Speaker 12: Could you speak up. Speaker 11: Sure can. John Gallagher, [inaudible 00:43:17] of Canada. First of all, you keep asking people to send information in. Do you have somebody capturing this information that's being shared today, that's part of the consultation process? J:

• Yeah. Dave's taking a note or two as we go along here.

Speaker 12: Not only that, just so everybody is aware. This is all being recorded and it's the intention of CLRC that this is going to go to a transcriber and everything from this afternoon, John's presentation, all questions and answers, are going to be transcribed. Anybody who is here, should, possibly, if we don't have your email, provide us with your email because this will be sent out and it will be sent out to every other association that we contacted about this meeting today. This is a real issue and we want everybody to understand what's going on here. Speaker 11: You mentioned a couple of these points earlier on in your presentation and, just reading some stuff from the government's old website, it talks about the keeping of accurate pedigree information on a national basis in considered critical to the improvement of animal breeds and livestock in

• general. It goes on to say, "consistent national standards for

representation of an animal's genetic background increases the integrity

• f information for domestic and foreign trade purposes and provides

protection to buyers of breeding stock." So, have those few points changed? I've heard you talk a little bit that there may be other ways. Not a lot of detail in there and when you talked about the cost of operating this and maybe having other ways of charging back. To me you're asking people to provide examples but you haven't provided really any information on some of the things that you might be thinking of. So it's hard to respond. Can you comment on that? J: The question is, not many options being presented by the Department here, just some ideas out for discussion. Quite frankly, we're at the point

• f harvesting ideas, not talking about (sneeze) [inaudible 00:45:29] what

A0050000 Page 17 of 46 you think and what sorts of challenges and opportunities do you see to go forward. We recognize, fully, the benefit of producers working

• together. There's no question and debate about it. The harnessing of

resources to breed livestock and breed dogs against the common goal. Driving forward, gathering up information, all that economies [inaudible 00:45:55] scale stuff. It's not a debate. I think it's recognized. We understand that fully. You can point at it. You can go to touch it. How it

• works. It's not hard. The advantages of working together for a common
• goal. That's not the point of the issue.

That there are benefits that arise from the Act, we're not having that debate either. We understand the advantages of having that pedigree that goes into [cattle‐wing 00:46:22] into Kazakhstan. We get that. They're over there. I understand fully the value of this. The question we're asking is, "Are there other ways to achieve that outcome?" Could this be done, for example, using a voluntary certification process. Is there a way for [crosstalk 00:46:43] and say, "We would like to be certified." Opportunities to think about it. I can tell you that we have examples in the Department where we've done. Way in the back. Speaker 13: When you talk about certification of the work that's in the Scrapies, for instance, there's maybe 10 goat breeders in Canada [inaudible 00:47:10] the Scrapies program. That's a volunteer thing. I think there's only 3 of us that are actually certified. I don't think volunteer certification is going to do a hell of a lot. J: It'd be an option to explore. I would offer that voluntary certification for

• rganic might be an example of where it works. Producers can choose to

produce them in organic fashion, become certified. There's a number of associations that would do that. Beef rating is an example of the certification process, again voluntary. Works not too bad. Speaker 14: My question is when you say a voluntary certification, I assume that the $300,000 you now spend on the Animal Pedigree Act, 200,000, you'll spend on certifying and how will you determine that the... I assume you're talking pedigrees? How would that work? Every individual association would have to certify with you? 100 different

• rganization would have to certify with you?

J: Well technically they do that now.

A0050000 Page 18 of 46 Speaker 14: No, no. Technically it's done now. It's already a done deal except for a new organization. J: There's an implied certification of being recognized under the Act. Speaker 14: So you're going to invest more money and time into it, is what you're saying? You're going to actually delve into the pedigrees and spend some time certifying that they are accurate and correct and that the system is working. J: I don't think we do pedigrees. Again, you're looking for the end of the discussion, not the start of the discussion. Speaker 14: I'm looking to understand just what you mean by certifi‐ I don't understand what‐ J: When I think about it, about a voluntary certification process‐ Speaker 14: For who, an individual breeder or an individual assoc‐ J: I'm thinking about associations. Speaker 14: OK. J: We would certify registries. The ability to certify an individual pedigree would be extraordinarily expensive. Speaker 14: Well, yeah. So would certifying each registry, I would think, when it's already done. Speaker 15: Who would oversee this voluntary certification? J: You can look at a couple of models. Right now we oversee it. We oversee the Animal Pedigree Act. Second model might be that you would find a third party and we would certify the third party. Speaker 15: This would also be in the private section. J: Sorry? Speaker 15: This would also be in the private sector. J: Yes, look for a private sector solution.

A0050000 Page 19 of 46 Speaker 15: Just looking at the oil industry, they are also on a voluntary basis looking at complying with the law and voluntary has not really been proven to be effective. Speaker 16: It wasn't effective with the CFIA at the [excel 00:50:21] either. J: Quite frankly, the part that wasn't effective at [excel 00:50:27] wasn't voluntary. Speaker 17: I would suggest one thing in consideration here, what I'm hearing personally, is we would lose arms length. At this time, by having the Animal Pedigree Act, by our government, gives it an arms length identity, which gives us a distinct identity as well but we operate in a due process

• manner. That is one of the reasons that I think we have, internationally,
• ver the years, been recognized as a country, I'm sorry, like it or not, we

are too small. We do not have the numbers. We cannot play the number

• game. And yet in the EU, many of them do have the numbers and they're

still playing this way. I think we just don't need it, and unless you want to become an American, I see no reason to go forward taking away what we have. Speaker 18: John, Just a couple of comments. It sounds like 200,000 to run this program is peanuts. If we could get rid of the senate we'd save Patrick Duffy's money and some of these other guys. Sometimes I find federal government... I never agreed that they got out of the national testing program, the ROP. It was world‐recognized and it was very valid and it was at arm's length. In agriculture I find the federal government getting out of a lot of things in agriculture. The aims process or the Growing Forward has been cut in half, and yet you are spending a lot of money in brand Canada. Here's the pedigree system that I think brands Canada. It's got the maple leaf. It's got the Minister's signature, and it's recognized. It's got the envy of a lot

• f countries in the world that don't have this program and couldn't afford
• it. We, under the umbrella of Canadian National Livestock Records, some
• f us are bigger associations and smart species. But some are smaller

associations and don't have the funding. So under the umbrella of Canadian National Livestock Records, which has been in operation for

• ver 100 years, and I'm a believer in "if it's not broken, why try to fix it." I

really don't see (applause). I'm an exporter but I'm also a breeder and I was surprised when this came up and I thought, "Where did this come from?" As far as

A0050000 Page 20 of 46 multinationals, we're a small country. A large country, second largest in the world, but 30 million people and our livestock industry isn't that big. At least I'm under the umbrella of one organization that can do something as we are today. We're competing against multinationals and [crosstalk 00:53:42] PIC Convention. But they're from England. I'm competing against top pigs in high foreign (cell phone ring) [hollup 00:53:48]. That's where their offices are. They've got European funding that is being cut or we don't have to start with here in Canada, and we're competing against EU funding that's huge. Again, arms length. The testing program that we do. I test under CCSI, which was the national program, and I can believe it. My pedigrees ‐ I say, "These are official pedigrees and this is the history" and I can convince my customers that demand, some countries demand, the official

• pedigrees. I'm competing against breeding companies that are huge and

their budget is amazing. They've got deep pockets and do I believe their pedigrees? Hell no! Do I believe their testing data? Again, hell no. I say we've got something good. So why fix it? J: [crosstalk 00:54:43] one of the saddest days of our lives is when we walk away from the performance testing [soft titles 00:54:49]. When I first started [inaudible 00:54:50] in Canada, that's where I started. Speaker 18: Envy of the world. J: Those were longer days. Just have another point, in terms of things we've cut lately, Brand Canada was one of them. Speaker 18: Was it? I didn't know that. Speaker 19: I'm [Lee Steeds 00:55:04]. I'm with the Canadian Kennel Club and thank you folks for letting us join today. John, this is so wrong‐headed. There's not a person in this room that believes in what you've brought forward

• today. It has cost us all, collectively, far more than $200,000 to be here

today and a number of us are here only for this. $200,000 is less than three person‐years in the federal government. It is absolutely no saving. It's a wash. It's not even a wash. This conversation can't happen. It doesn't make any sense. All of us need these pedigrees. We all need the umbrella of the

• rganizations like the CLRC and the CKC and the other large organization

that are under the APA, in order to properly deal with the rest of the

A0050000 Page 21 of 46

• word. As everyone has said, we're very small and we have 20,000

members that would become 20,000 breeders, were the CKC not to exist. Pedigrees would be run off of personal computers and people could say anything that they wanted to say. And that's what they would be trying to export. Our reputation would be absolutely dreadful. We would have nothing to stand on. Everyone here values the APA. So why you're here, trying to tell us for $200,000 that we should get rid of the very act that makes us unique in this world, because we're so small compared to everybody else, is just beyond me. Speaker 20: I'm not going to repeat what was said there. Could we then look at this as progressing this to some significant discussion about what changes might be appropriate. I do like what you're saying about the fact that we have a prescriptive, as opposed to enabling, so the philosophy behind that concept and much of what you said does make sense to me. I think that the fear which is expressed is real and in common on the logic that the alternative to achieve the same thing, if we're talking about the government stepping so far away, this may not be a reasonable option. Let's look at how we can change registration [crosstalk 00:57:29]. J: I think Chris has made a good point here. We're not in an all‐or‐nothing game here. It's not repeal or not. There are opportunities here and, it comes back to, we haven't had a really good discussion with the [inaudible 00:57:43] in 25 years. There are [inaudible 00:57:46] of the Animal Pedigree Act that restrict the ability to do business. I'll come back to Livestock Records Corporation here, for example, and our restriction

• n their ability to do business outside of their membership.

Speaker 21: Excuse me. I do have to take you on on that comment, because in your presentation your direct words are, "Once we decide to go forward" That was exactly what you said. I write things down, guys, and I have a board that can vouch for me. Once we decide to go forward. You were talking, at the time, about this act no longer being valid because it's 25 years old. Well, guys, I guess I'm no longer valid because I'm 62. I'm sure that my husband is not evaluating if I still have a position in the family. Also, you mentioned about audited financial statements. Well, there's no definition in our act, or the APA, what an audited financial statement is. Under the Act the minister does have the ability to go after and I would like to ask if the various small associations have been asked for audited financial statements, because an audited financial statement can be

A0050000 Page 22 of 46 prepared by a committee of three as long as none of them are signatures

• n the account. That's [number 00:59:21].

Then you talked about fragmentation. You want an example? Guys, I've got an example. Canadian Blonde d'Aquitaine Association. I sat on that board and [rick‐sat 00:59:33] was present until the Ontario Blonde d'Aquitaine Association. The Ontario Blonde d'Aquitaine Association wanted to figure out how they could break away from the Canadian Association because they did not like the policy. Luckily for that Act, for whatever it's worth, stopped them. There's an example of fragmentation. I bet every one of you in this meeting, right here, can think of your own association and some provincial group, or 4‐5 members, who are not happy with what the Canadian Association is doing, as soon as this act is gone, would be saying, "Well that's OK. We're going to start our own association." Incorporating under non‐industry Canada, but even if you incorporate it under Industry Canada. I'm going to incorporate the Ontario Blonde Association. I'm going to get a numbered company. You'll have no way of tracing that I am that and I'll be operating as a Blonde

• Association. I do not have to incorporate under an Angus name, a Jersey
• name. I can incorporate in Industry Canada under another corporation.

They'll be no traceability, again, as to how many organizations you have

• ut there. We'll be like the Americans, just like you said.

Speaker 22: If I could. The vice‐president from the Canadian Federation of Agriculture couldn't be here today so he asked me to read a statement on his behalf, titled the CFA statement of support for the Animal Pedigree Act: The CFA has reviewed the potential consequences of repealing the Animal Pedigree Act in a board meeting earlier this week, and we can see no benefit to the repealing of the Act. The Act provides a legal framework that should be the cornerstone of further development of Canadian genetics for both domestic and export opportunities. The Act provides confidence in the accuracy of pedigree information on a national basis, allows for continual breed improvement, and ultimately increases the integrity of Canadian genetics. Much like the integrity and quality associated with the Canadian Grain Commission and inspection and grading of Canadian grain exports, the Animal Pedigree Act provides Canadian genetics with an international reputation for quality that would be considerably diminished in its absence. Furthermore, the CFA knows that the existing legislation provides a cost‐effective tool to address these issues with minimal local employee burden. The removal of legislation that protects producers/breeders and those who buy their livestock, does

A0050000 Page 23 of 46 not seem to align with the government's overall goal of promoting Canadian exports. If Canada's agricultural industry is to take advantage of the export market opportunities, that the Canadian government continues to aggressively pursue, tools like the Animal Pedigree Act must remain in place. The Canadian brand is recognized internationally as a source of high‐quality products. This Act ensures that Canadian genetics continue to support this brand. The CFA would like to express its unanimous support for the Animal Pedigree Act as a cornerstone for the maintenance and improvement of Canadian genetics for domestic producers and expansion of Canadian genetic exports, as well as the continued development of markets for Canadian agriculture. Sincerely, Humphrey Bannack. Speaker 23: Peggy Newman, past chair of CLRC. Since I got the invitation to be here today, I had questions of my own mind like, "Where's this coming from. Who's driving it?" I've sat here now, all day, and I don't know who's doing it yet. I haven't had one comment that anybody on this floor agrees that this should go ahead. There's absolutely nobody. I've been fortunate over the years to be involved in some exporting and involved with the industry as far as pedigrees. We were the envy of the whole world with our pedigrees. If it ain't broke, I'm with you, don't fix it. That's all I have to say right now. Speaker 24: Thanks John. Even earlier I just want to make an observation as a retired

• politician. John and David have done a great job today of sharing with us

the kinds of things that are, in my opinion, remarkable civil service does. That is, it serves the government in power and advises them of the pros and cons on things that they want to know the pros and cons about. So I thank you both for that. You're taking some fire here and you're not a

• politician. I sort of am. The last point highlights this. The federal

government seems to want to get out of areas that it, constitutionally, has no business in. However, agriculture doesn't fall into that category. The Canadian constitution has two shared powers, only two. One of them is immigration. The other is agriculture. So the federal government shouldn't be running away from carrying out roles in the agricultural sector because it is a power assigned to them. The observation is made by you a number of times that it's over a quarter

• f a century since this act was looked at for revision, and I think that's

where the answers lie. The issues of what you're doing with US registrations coming into Canada, which you don't trust for reasons I won't get into because they've been well touched on here, [cuz‐he‐dealt‐

A0050000 Page 24 of 46 with 01:05:33]. Dairy breeds and the dairy network, that's an issue that's an important one and should be dealt with. Enforcement and audit for small associations that can't afford the cost of a full audit. Those are all things that can be dealt with in revision of the Act, which is long overdue, and I think that's the solution to the problem here and I would hope that that would be something, I think it is generally supported here. The last thing I think we'd like to see is this get very far without mentioning our strong feelings to our members of parliament. The government of the day owns rural Canada, lock, stock and barrels, certainly in this province, and I think pretty much across the country. There is a tendency, however, to downgrade certain points of political

• access. One of the most important points of political access is the person

we elect to represent us at our constituency and I think those people should know as much as we can let them know about this, as we don't want to see it in a budget bill with 200 pages and 50 other acts, without us being heard, those of us who believe in the continuation of important work carried out by Canada under the Livestock Pedigree Act. Sorry for the little [inaudible 01:06:59]. By the way, I might still get a garden party here. I'm not [crosstalk 01:07:02]. But I love him anyway. Speaker 25: I have a question John. The fact is, with the number of people on their

• wn and the cross‐sections of everyone that are here, I haven't heard too

many people in favor of this act, which is probably a little [cost‐act 01:07:23] there is, on record anyplace. Why wouldn't you ask of a show

• f hands of those in favor of it in here, and those that aren't, just to give

you some understanding. Is that possible? Speaker 26: Can I ask all in favor of keeping an Animal Pedigree Act? Sure we can have a show of hands. Speaker 25: Would that be something reasonable to put it on the record? Speaker 26: [crosstalk 01:07:45] All in favor of maintaining an Animal Pedigree Act, even if it was slightly modified. Can we have a show of hands of everybody in favor of that? Speaker 25: Would you entertain a motion from the floor? Unknown Speaker: Yes please.

A0050000 Page 25 of 46 Unknown Speaker: Can you repeat that please? Unknown Speaker: We're going to have a motion. Speaker 25: If you'd entertain a motion from the floor I would, given the importance

• f the Animal Pedigree Act to the purebred livestock industry in Canada, I

would move that CLRC officially contact the Government of Canada stating that we wish to retain the Animal Pedigree Act in its current state. Unknown Speaker: And do we have a seconder to that? Unknown Speaker: I'll second that motion. Unknown Speaker: But I think we want to make an amendment to it, of not just... For CLRT. Unknown Speaker: CLRC and other represent‐ Animal. So, everybody in every organization in the room is entitled to vote on this topic. Unknown Speaker: And it will be... Unknown Speaker: Dan, can you take the mic and explain exactly what your vote is? Unknown Speaker: The motion is‐ Unknown Speaker: Let him just come up and... Change it to all incorporated under. Don't say CLRC. Speaker 25: The intent of my motion is that the government be advised that all of the incorporated associations under the Animal Pedigree Act here, that we wish to maintain the Act in its current state. Is that clear enough? [crosstalk 01:09:31] Speaker 27: I'm not a CLRC member. Speaker 25: We realize that but we've invited other associations here so we'd like them to express their‐ Speaker 27: I agree with that. But the concern I have with the wording as is just presented is, a few minutes ago John talked about the possibility of

A0050000 Page 26 of 46

• pening the door to discussion on amendment and I would be very

supportive of that discussion. Speaker 25: Perhaps it ends up resulting in no changes to the Animal Pedigree Act, but I sure wouldn't mind having [inaudible 01:10:08] forced to have the discussion about possible amendment to it. [crosstalk 01:10:13]. Unknown Speaker: To keep the Act. To keep the Act. That's it. That's what we want, man. We want to keep the Act. In its current form I'm less in favor of that. Speaker 25: The concern I've got is that if you open it to discussion then you've

• pened up the whole realm of disillusion as well. I don't want to see that.

Unknown Speaker: Well repeal is different than an amendment. Unknown Speaker: Well maybe we should change the motion that we do not want the Animal Pedigree Act repealed. [crosstalk 01:10:46]. Do you want to come and read... Unknown Speaker: Do you mind if we change, so. Unknown Speaker: No, that's fine. Speaker 28: So the motion is that we would not like to see the Animal Pedigree Act

• repealed. We want it to be changed. It could be amended.

Unknown Speaker: So we have a seconder? Unknown Speaker: Mike Keane had already seconded. Unknown Speaker: So, some questions? Unknown Speaker: As the motion is read now with what you were saying that you can't do it that way. Speaker 28: Oh OK. The motion now says that we do not want to see the Animal Pedigree Act repealed. So all... Unknown Speaker: That's the motion. Speaker 28: That's the motion. We have a question. I'll ask the question. I'm not going to ask for a discussion because we won't get out of here. All in favor of the motion please raise your hand. [crosstalk 01:12:08]

A0050000 Page 27 of 46 Unknown Speaker: Alright we'll start here. Where do you want to start? Unknown Speaker: Just write down a number [crosstalk 01:12:16]. Speaker 28: I'm now going to ask if there's any opposed. So there's one opposed to repealing the Act. Unknown Speaker: And we'll have the number then from who all registered? Speaker 28: There's a couple of abstentions. Can I have the people that have [staged 01:12:56] hold up their hands? So we had three abstentions, one opposed, and the rest were in favor of not repealing the Act. Unknown Speaker: There not really an abstention because you asked for people that are representing organizations registered under the Animal Pedigree Act. Speaker 28: [crosstalk 01:13:18] I thought we asked everybody to vote. Unknown Speaker:

• OK. That's a little different than what we understood.

Speaker 28: So, would you like to vote? [crosstalk 10:13:44] Unknown Speaker: We're all for the APA. We don't want to see it revoked but I want to ensure that we spend as much time, instead of slamming, focusing on parts that can be improved. Make it a better act. There are people that [inaudible 01:14:05] advantage, those changes put into place so the [inaudible 01:14:09] value of the Animal Pedigree Act. So while we're sending them examples also look at how it's affecting us and what we'd like to see changed for the better instead of just negative [crosstalk 01:14:25]. Unknown Speaker:

• Dr. Church?

Speaker 29: This is a really interesting discussion and with due reference to Dan here, I'd like to talk a little bit about when the last time the Animal Pedigree Act was amended. This all was driven when Dan's father was Minister of Agriculture, and in this particular case this involved three people: [inaudible 01:14:54] Williams, Deputy Minister, Ken Wells who, at the time was [inaudible 01:14:57] animals, and it was the drive for putting Canada on the livestock world market. The reason that we ended up, and I'm talking beef cattle now. In my family, myself, I registered my first heifers in 1948 and my family's been involved with Simmental, Charolais,

A0050000 Page 28 of 46 Angus, and [inaudible 01:15:23] since that time. I was involved with the king ranch in developing the [san‐to‐for‐tu‐tis 01:15:29]. I was involved in [Tom Lasker 01:15:31] in developing their [eight‐masker 01:15:33] which Roy [Birch 01:15:35] and [Gill Harpy 01:15:36] who started with

• BeefBooster. We've been involved with different areas like that.

In the late 1960's, early 70's, when we changed our rules and the import

• f the European [freaks 01:15:32] came in within the beef cattle business,

particularly, there was amendments made and the results that we were talking about in 1988 were the fruition of that. As a operator of [peak 01:16:07] operations in Australia and New Zealand, formerly of Zimbabwe, and the United States, I can tell you that we are the envy of all of those places. When we start talking about the US in this regard, you want to get into a wreck that is far worse than the tea party, start talking about the associations in different regions. It's absolutely phenomenal. Other parts that I'd like to indicate is that during that time we had an industry, and [Bock‐year 01:16:38] is right dead‐center in it, when we started embryo transfer [inaudible 01:16:42] livestock transfer. When we attracted the seven major A.I. studs in beef cattle into this area. The new breeds that started at that time, [ace‐ton‐burger 01:16:53] is an example here in Alberta. The real crux here is, we need to keep up with what's going on with amendments that allow our associations to still, essentially be the [boat 01:17:07] from my perspective. I think that that is where we have this unique pedigree [crosstalk 01:17:14]. I made a couple of calls when this meeting was noted. I called my friends in New Zealand and my friends in Australia. All of them concluded with a statement, "You guys are lucky to have your Animal Pedigree Act so that we can recognize" and somebody said that our pedigree has the Canadian maple leaf on there but we've changed it. The changes has to do with the beef cattle business and in the dairy business, where negated that contributes to [pee‐tee‐kays 01:17:46] have been building on each

• ther.

The interesting thing, somebody spoke from the slide industry. In the slide industry, we've basically got an international market. Now, you're well aware that the last demand from China was a big market for our pedigree animals. Demanded that they have the original pedigree

• animals. Not any of the big companies. And guess where that had to

come from? Had to come from Canada and those are going there now. So don't get this deal that [inaudible 01:18:18] to throw away with and we

A0050000 Page 29 of 46 get either a mix or we have a big government regulation that says, "This is how you're going to do it." I'd like to conclude, then, with one thing. I want to say a special thank you to Lisa [Hutt 01:18:33] and Elizabeth [inaudible 01:18:35] in the Canadian Livestock Record. I've dealt with them for over 30 years and I can tell you that when you talk about consideration from an organization as Canadian‐wide like that, I've never dealt with anybody that is as pleasant, enthusiastic, and responsive as those two ladies are. I just want to say that's a real credit to the group at Canadian Livestock Records. And just quickly, people from CKC. My wife is a dog breeder, a shih tzu breeder for 40 years and that's an example of where your performance, whether it be agility or the other [inaudible 01:19:18] you deal with in maintaining it in a realistic way. I hope you're looking at it in an amendment point of view. This group here have opportunities to look forward to tomorrow but built on yesterday. Speaker 30: I think you've heard pretty loud and clearly that this room's not in favor

• f killing the Act but in terms of amendments it might be useful to detail,

for the room, what ramifications may occur form opening the Act? Can you shed any light on that, John? J: Ramifications in what sense? So we can start, we can't stop? Speaker 30: Just who all has input in once the Act is open [crosstalk 01:20:05] J: Well when we open an act all Canadians get an opportunity to provide advice and guidance and comment. Obviously, not all Canadians are likely to find the Animal Pedigree Act worth their effort to phone and take advantage of. But certainly the process of opening an act and amending an act, we would be soliciting views or welcoming views from all Canadian, for sure. Everybody gets a chance to speak to it. Obviously, you have to get that into a manageable package that ministers can deal with and there would be a decision made at the cabinet table, likely, as to whether they'd bring the Act forward in parliament for change. Then they would roll through the process of opening the act, amending the act, department debate. We would run through the way we would any other act. One of the challenges of the act is to make changes we have to go through all that process in time. Amongst amendments, you might want to think about, is there a way that we could get at some of these changes

A0050000 Page 30 of 46 that we want to make, a little quicker, than having to go for a full‐on

• pening an act in parliament. But it runs like any other act.

Speaker 31: Will your information you got today go into your manageable package? Because today I think it was one big answer to put in your package. J: Well, certainly. Two takeaways that we've taken so far today are, other than some good comments [inaudible 01:21:38] here and there. One, not any enthusiasm for an outright repeal of the Act. Marginally, [inaudible 01:21:47] plus/minus the same enthusiasm relative to a voluntary certification approach. And then thirdly‐ [crosstalk 01:29:56]. No enthusiasm for voluntary certification. I do believe there is less than in [kinch 01:22:17] that straight outright (laughter) [crosstalk 01:22:19]. And of course the third one is that we might, in fact, want to open up a bit of discussion on potential amendments to the Act that might make the thing a little more useful going forward and that there is some

• pportunity if we want to have some discussion about that as we move

along. Unknown Speaker: Chris, and then... Speaker 32: Along that line if you're trying to find a way that's more flexible, and if you take a leave on what David [inaudible 01:22:45] helping people in associations doing, in other words make your by‐laws bare‐bones so that the flexibility comes with your policy and your other things within

• associations. One of the things that has been, I think, a glaring oversight

in the APA is that, in fact, there have been no regulations developed. I suspect that if we adjusted the Act a little bit and then put in place

• regulations. Regulations can be changed ... It's much less costly to do it

and they can be changed [inaudible 01:23:15] industry if they don't appear to be working. I would put that advice as one of the ways to look at it. We might even be able to look at this Act as it stands, and put some regulations together in an industry‐wide consultation, so that we have some consistency of applications, some answers to those ambiguous questions. That might even solve the problem but I suspect we might want to make some amendments [crosstalk 01:23:39].

A0050000 Page 31 of 46 J: Certainly, the ability to put regulations in place is enabled in the Act. In fact, there are regulations [inaudible 01:23:47] in the Act. They govern the disillusion of associations. So, little known [wipe 01:23:53]. Speaker 33: Are you going to be communicating with the Minister after this weekend

• n how things went here in Calgary, or are you going to continue with all
• f your meetings and gather this information, which could take several

months, and then present it to the Minister? J: You have to understand that, the hierarchy in the Department is such that I'm probably not going to be communicating directly with the

• Minister. [crosstalk 01:24:16]

Speaker 33: If this could be a waste of time than maybe your other meetings could be more focused on ideas to make the Act better versus getting beat up for the next three or four meetings. J: It's fine, by the way. In terms of informing the Department on its way to the Ministry's office, the Department will know before 6:00 tonight, Alberta time, what we talked about here because I have an assistant of the Minister who is very keen on understanding the results of the discussion here today. He's going to need to use that information to speak to a deputy Minister who's also a little enthusiastic on the process. Speaker 34: Could I make a suggestion. I think the way around that is for our president to write a nice letter to the Minister, complimenting the Agriculture Agra‐Food representatives here and the good job they did in putting the pros and cons and what the result of it was. Nothing wrong with us doing that. J: As you know, a great number of the members of the CLRC and a few

• thers have taken the opportunity to write directly to the Minister and

express those ideas that were reflected there in the presentation. I just took those out of the letters that came to the Minister. I want to offer one small thing here, just a point of clarification, about worrying about beating up the government guy. You need to realize that I'm in a meeting here where 60 or 70 people are telling me that the service that I deliver is indispensable. Do you know how many meetings I go to where that's not the topic? This is great! Speaker 35: Do you truly need to hear that, that it is indispensable to us, and that the vast majority of us are volunteers? We can't help anymore and it's not

A0050000 Page 32 of 46 costing the government a whole lot at $200,000. Take a look at it again. Where do you think you're going to save money, really. J: Again, just a small point. It's not only about saving money. Your point, it's $200,000, rounding error in our budget. It is a secondary issue, or another issue that we can consider in your drivers of why we're here, is that first line that I had. Regardless of the cost, should the government be involved in this business? It's the second question. Speaker 36: I just hope that your $200,000 job's OK. Speaker 37: I think anybody that follows Minister Ritz's general program throughout agriculture is he wants to get rid of red tape. He wants to get rid of departments that are involved with industry. And we understand that. The thing about this particular act, I think that he needs to know that there's more than just industry involved and that it deals with trade, it deals with the genetic improvements of a lot of industry, and a lot of different breeds. The $200,000 is not this issue in this thing. From his point of view I'm sure, considering what doing with the rest of government, is to get rid of red tape. I understand from the way that you presented what you did that there's a bunch of little things here that you want to get rid of. However, I don't think that's where we need to be, going forward. I think we need to look after the Act but look after it in a more responsible way. Speaker 38: John, thank you for coming today and be so willing to share and help. You have been asked, "How do you reduce program costs to the government?" We understand that. I think you're hearing the message that there are other ways of accomplishing that and [inaudible 01:28:31]. I want to ask the broader group here, before people start leaving, how do we ensure that we don't forget about today and start writing the letters that you need to have in support of the amendments to the Act. I'd like to know some direction, more from the audience. Who's going to be taking the lead on that or who [inaudible 01:28:57] so that we don't leave without writing out [crosstalk 01:29:02], but I think it needs to come from associations as well. J: Again, to Dave's point. I encourage to write your MP's. A number of you have, but the information I need is not discussion from folks to reconfirm that you don't think the repeal's a good idea. Send that along if you want. What I'm interested in is, "Where do you see these improvements? What are these examples that we need to deal with so we don't fall into the same traps we've had before?" That stuff's of value to me. The other stuff

A0050000 Page 33 of 46 you can write it and you can send it in to the Ministers and MP's. I said, you've probably seen [guess 01:29:45] 40 letters, 50 letters in and express exactly what's come up here over the course of the day. We provided those responses are going back out through the system. I wouldn't discourage you from writing whoever you want. What would really be helpful to me is those key ideas of room for

• improvement. Where you want to see these changes? What things do

you think are holding you back? What things do you think we need to make sure we hold on to? Don't forget that side of the coin. That kind of information, I would encourage you to throw that at me directly. To Dave's point, if you want to collectively do some stuff... Speaker 39: John, we thought that the Act was being dealt with very good so from the way that you've just asked this question, what are your problems with the Act? Like the real problems that [quotes 01:30:35] that you need to look for improvements. Other than a few regulatory things that which, to me, with some modifications can be looked at. I don't know what you do with the APA. So you're asking us to give you efficiencies on what you do. J: We take anything at this point in time. We have some things that drive us

• nuts. I'm not sure quite why I approve all the by‐law amendments. The

Industry Canada model and Not‐for‐profits Corporation Acts come forward and said, well really you don't have to do that. Currently, every by‐law amendment that you try to make has to come to the Minister for

• approval. Why? Why do we do that? [crosstalk 01:31:25]

Speaker 39: Do you want to know why? I'll tell you why. J: Because it's absolutely necessary now. Speaker 39: Maybe so, but it then prevents a group of people getting together and deciding they want to change an association's by‐law and the Minister then has to look at it to see if it for the good of that association or if it's for that elite group over here who wants to do the change. That's the main‐ Excuse me. I bet you if you looked at it that's the main reason that's in the Act there. J: That may be, although...

A0050000 Page 34 of 46 Actually it's the DG that handles it. You can think of my boss. Not quite. Speaker 39: Well, mainly. J: The view of the Department would be that the members of the associations should be able to figure out their own business. They're in that business. We look at it to make sure that, in the by‐law, was it passed appropriately. Get the right [corns 01:32:30]. But if all those things are met, it's your by‐law, as long as it's not contrary to the Act, we're probably going to let it go through. We spend a little bit of time, and I think David spends far too much time, sorting out by‐laws that tend to be in contradiction with another set of by‐laws that are already within an association. We do some traffic control and those sorts of things. There have been examples of area that we'd like to look at. I mentioned the idea of deciding how many board members that Livestock Records has, and who one of them is going to be. The audit reports [inaudible 01:33:09] flexibility around that. There are a number of things and our hope is, as we go through this process, we're going to harvest up a number of those that we can take advantage of. Speaker 40: I was going to ask Dan if, I think you guys did a perfect job of bringing this

• together. Bringing the industry together and the fact that CLRC is a

cooperative membership with a lot of good associations to respond to this gentleman. Could we charge the CLRC board with carrying on this and being the focus for the industry consultation process. Unknown Speaker: No. Speaker 40: Who's going to drive it then? Unknown Speaker: Well, there's a lot of registered breed associations with the APA that are not here. Speaker 40: No, I understand that. But who's going to put all this together? Unknown Speaker: So how can you ... Unknown Speaker: It should be this [inaudible 01:34:11] Speaker 40:

• No. We have to be pulling ourselves together. We don't have to wait for

them.

A0050000 Page 35 of 46 Unknown Speaker: I would ask, has this been valuable for you today, John? J: Certainly. Unknown Speaker: So then I would strongly encourage you, as you go out and do the rest of the consultations, to make it widely, publicly known, so that all those that are impacted can participate and not do small boutique sessions. J: One of the things I asked for was advice on how to go forward. One thing we will be doing is sitting down and, to John's point, these smaller boutique sessions. Can 20 people around a table kind of things we want to discuss. We want to have some discussions in that kind of a format because we want to make sure that folks have a chance to roll up the sleeves and engage on a file. If I have to talk to 200 breeders in a room, we're going to get a nice speech from me and that'll be about the end of the discussion. We'll get a few viewpoints on board, but I really want to spend 3 or 4 hours with some folks that are involved in this business and go though maybe on a little bit more clause‐by‐clause basis of the changes in the Act. I don't think, John, that's an either‐or proposition. I'm happy to come and speak to anybody about anything. [cane‐star 01:35:28] business anyway. We'd like to do that webinar approach so that if I have to crank 3‐400 people on to a webinar we can get that done and go through it and,

• bviously, make that information widely‐known. Folks can get on the

internet and go from there. But I don't want to underestimate the value

• f sitting down with a few of the mainstream groups and having a good,

thorough discussion and spending some time to go through the file. Speaker 41: When you say mainstream groups, how do you select people. It affects so many people, how do you exclude? How do you decide who's going to be at the table and how do you exclude the other people that it affects? J: Well, [inaudible 01:36:14] not exclude anybody. We're happy to talk to anybody, anytime. Speaker 41: But if we're not at the table when you have your discussions, then we have no input. Today there's a large group of people giving input, but if you now go and have small group meetings with select groups of people, how do we know that they're representing our interests? This is, in a lot

• f cases, people's livelihoods and passions that you're talking about

changing and it appears to be government‐driven, not industry‐driven.

A0050000 Page 36 of 46 The Animal Pedigree Act gives us a framework to really self‐regulate

• under. Yeah, you approve our by‐laws but unless it's a really stupid by‐

law you approve it. Really, we are self‐regulating under the Animal Pedigree Act and yet we don't know what you're proposing and we don't really know... The feeling was, rightly or wrongly, disseminated to us but it's basically a done deal that this act is going to be repealed, and that you're going through a quick process of meeting with industry. So when you say you're going to meet with small groups of people, that makes me wonder, "Is it already a done deal? Is it going to be repealed, and you're just looking to find some reasons to support it?" J: I'm going to go find 10 guys that think it's a good idea? Speaker 41: Yeah, exactly. So far you're not doing so well, but... J: In terms of how we expect to get this done, quite frankly‐ Speaker 41: Again, what done? J: In terms of meeting with people and how do I establish who I'm going to meet with. The broader consultation from webinar is... We're going to blow an email out to the list that David has and folks can get on as it suits

• them. In terms of meeting with smaller groups, I've had some discussions

with John Gallagher, Mike Lattimer and Michael Hall. That includes some horses, some beef breeds, obviously, and the Canadian Livestock Genetics Association. I've asked them to set up my meetings to make sure that I have the right people to speak to. I'll come talk to anybody and, as I said, if the preference is that we should do this in a large conference room in Ottawa, not sure how effective it would be, but I'm willing to speak to anybody. Speaker 41: John, with all due respect on that point, you've asked us to set up those meetings and I have a different opinion. I don't think that I should be selecting who comes to the meetings or not. I think you should be making it widely‐known so that those who want to participate can. It shouldn't be left up to me or Standardbred Canada to determine who comes to the meeting and who doesn't. Speaker 42: I agree. I don't believe, with all due respect to any group, whether it be CBBC or anything, I don't know whether what their viewpoint is so I don't know whether they're going to select a group of people to represent the

A0050000 Page 37 of 46 broader consensus. When you leave it to a group that is involved with registries but they're not really a registry. It doesn't really affect them

• directly. It affects them indirectly so you're not really involving the people

that it's affecting directly. Speaker 41: No, but I'm hoping that there are members, the beef breeds for example, that they would invite them to come. Speaker 42: But why would you not just invite the beef breeds so that you know for sure we were invited, rather than hope that it might happen? It should

• happen. As John says, it really isn't up to him to select the‐

Speaker 43: You should stand up to speak so everybody [inaudible 01:40:02] Speaker 42: I'm just saying that it doesn't seem right to me that you should go to a person and say, "Set up a meeting for me with a few people." Because those few people might not be representative of what the general consensus is. Therefore you're excluding people from the process, automatically, and like John's saying, you ask him to put a group

• together. How does he do that? Does he call 3 or 4 friends?

J: Well, quite frankly, I was hoping that as a knowledgeable man, the horse industry would give me the right guys. One way in the back there, sorry. Speaker 44: I think from the start of your presentation that this really is just the kick‐

• ff, this consultation. In that format, I think what you're talking about,

would be coming here today, is the right way to go. But I think at some point you have to put a little bit more structure and framework [inaudible 01:40:58] consultation because I haven't heard anything about time

• frames. I haven't heard anything about what the real objective is. I

haven't heard anything about background issues around a [pep‐c 01:41:10] point of view, which would be the catalyst for people to provide some informed comments and unless you get to that stage it becomes one‐off conversations with a few people who go back to the main group to do it. I think it's important enough that we really need to start talking about what is the time frame for this. Is this a 3‐month kind of deal, or is [inaudible 01:41:32] talking we've got enough time to us to get it right. To me it's gone off and on a little bit because most of what I hear is repeal and, in fact, modernization is what I hear most people in the room talking

A0050000 Page 38 of 46

• about. I really think that needs to be clarified right up front and where it's

coming from. Otherwise we're just going to be going around the horn and you can come back here again next year and we will have the same kind

• f discussion. So if you're really sincere about it, you need to put some

structure to it. You need to have a backdrop. You need to have issues and you need to have what the real objective is and how we're going to feed into it. J: It's certainly hard to disagree with that and I could come with it if you

• want. But I wanted to open the discussion today and I didn't want put a

box around it or a fence around it and say, "Well we could only talk about this and we can't talk about that." I'd like to talk about it all, but I don't raise your cattle every day. I don't raise your hogs every day. I'm not involved in the business every day. We administer the Act on a day‐to‐ day basis in my shop. We came to ask people, "What are the options here? What's the scope of the discussion? What do we need to think about? If not repeal, could be amendment. Amendments in what areas? What sorts of things have annoyed you about the Act over time? Where can we make it better?" So, instead of us coming with the, "This is the box we're talking about," I want you guys to have all your input in in the next 15 minutes. I opened it up at the start, say, "Alright. Let's get a good sense of the discussion before we get a fence around it." Speaker 45: You talked with meeting with people around the table once you collected what you thought should be there. Those people, are they bureaucrats or are they farmers? J: I'm assuming they're breeders. I'm interested in talking to the animal breeders. Speaker 45: I'm not talking about the animal breeders. I'm talking about when you present this stuff up the lines. Up the line to your superior or the next

• ne up or whatever. Are they farmers or are they bureaucrats?

J: It's between me and the Minister. I'm as close to a farmer as you've got. [crosstalk 01:43:51] Speaker 46: The laws of Canada are repealed or amended by the parliament of Canada, not by the civil service. Not by the cabinet. In the end, they have to be approved by, either repeal or amendment, by the parliament of

• Canada. There are committees who want to get into this [sen‐or‐ab‐o‐la‐

A0050000 Page 39 of 46 shint 01:44:11] discussion here of [crosstalk 01:44:15] parliament. Have agriculture committees and that's the spot where you're going to be best heard, in a public forum with a full and fair opportunity for both sides to be heard and for. People ultimately have to decide to be as well informed as they can be on a decision that might be put forward by the government or that might be proposed by somebody like people in this room. Speaker 47: Your department, for two, have brought this forward so you have some

• concerns. I would suggest that you tell us what is bothering you about

this act and give it to us. You have the records of every association that is covered by the Animal Pedigree Act. Send it to them and each association can review this in a good time frame. Not 15 minutes or a week or so, review it as an association, and feed it back to you. That way you will have input from each individual association, each individual breeding and

• species. That way you would get the whole thing. Otherwise, like Dan

says, a few people here, a few people here may have this interest or that interest. I'm going to think on [Mike Lattimer 01:45:52] from the [CDC 01:45:54]. He is looking after beef. I'm a beef producer. There are horse producers. There are dog producers. They might not be here. Because we're spread across Canada, we cannot afford, some of us are [associate 01:46:10]. I am here on my own dollar and it's costing me a bit of money for my own

• association. I am a volunteer. If we all have to go to Ottawa, or wherever,

you can come to Calgary, or go to Edmonton. We'll go to Regina. That's costing me a lot of money. But if we can do that, we've got all kinds of technology: internet, Twitter, Facebook, whatever, we can poll our own members and get feedback. In our membership we have 100 members. About 30% replied. That's what I have to deal with. I'm the president of our association. At least I would have that input from my 30 members to pass it on to you. So you tell us what your beef is to start with, just looking at this thing, and then go from there. Speaker 48: John? J: [inaudible 01:47:05] Speaker 48: I want to compliment you. You've done an awesome job today delivering a message which I don't think too many in this room wanted to hear. I get the feeling, going forward, we're looking at appealing. It's [possib

A0050000 Page 40 of 46 01:47:16], it needs, refresh. I've been working on it for the last 25 years. I agree, it needs refreshing. I admit, I know nothing about how governments work. My theory on this, and a couple of my friends here that are industry, was that you should maybe have a think tank meeting amongst the different species. I honestly have no clue what is of relevance to the horses, the pigs or the dogs. I know what's relevant to the beef industry. Okay? The CBBC, you have mentioned, we're going to host a meeting of the beef breeds made in Canada. Not just the managers of CBBC, but all beef breeds, to meet with you again. I got that part, right? Unknown Speaker: Yep. Speaker 48: All breeds, not just councilmen. Unknown Speaker: All membership. Speaker 48: OK? You should have that type of a meeting with all... The other species'

• groups. Then we take another step forward and find out what those

levels want. J: That's our intent. Speaker 48: OK. J: I expect to be in this sit down [crosstalk 01:48:34] with the dairy guys at the end of the month. There's one in the back there. I think I've been ignoring you for a long time. Speaker 49: I just have a few questions. Do we have a date in place for this May meeting yet? J: May... Speaker 49: You were talking about a future meeting sometime probably in May. J: Oh, the beef breeds? Unknown Speaker: Back here in Calgary in May.

A0050000 Page 41 of 46 J: Oh, sorry, yeah. I'm coming back in May as part of the discussion we would have with the beef guys. We haven't figured out a date yet because, well, my calendar's been a bit of a disaster. So, no, that date's not set. I think the first week or the last week, if I recall the discussion. Speaker 49: Who is the individual driving this, rescinding the Act to the Minister? Clearly somebody's heading up the committee and bringing it to the Minister saying, "We need to get rid of this Animal Pedigree Act." Who's the the person that's driving this whole [crosstalk 01:49:28]? J: This is coming forward from the Department. The way the Department works is, they interface between the Department and the Deputy

• Minister. So nothing goes forward to the Minister without, in our case,

Deputy Minister Vinet saying, "OK. This should come forward the Minister." The responsibility for putting the recommendations and getting the information together and getting that in some coherent manner, such that it can be considered by the Department, and then move to the Minister's office, rests with me. Speaker 49: You're the individual who wants to repeal the Act? J: There seems to be a thought out there and I'm not sure where that myth started, but there was actually an individual who wanted to repeal the

• Act. I'm the individual who wanted to open the discussion on whether

the Act has any value and what changes might be made to it that would make it more useful. If those changes were to include "repeal", I would consider that. But it's not me that makes a decision that we're going to do that. It is me, though, that is responsible for preparing a package such that the senior management up from me, and the Minister, can make a coherent decision. What decision they make, that's their own business. The Minister will make his decisions based on what he thinks. My role is to make sure that we have adequately captured the issue such that he can make an intelligent decision. So, that's the role of bureaucracy. That's the role of the minister, but it travels up the chains between me and him in terms of [crosstalk 01:51:32]. Speaker 49: So there's no one person we should [tar 01:51:34] then? J: David. Unknown Speaker: He's the messenger. I want him to [crosstalk 01:51:39].

A0050000 Page 42 of 46 J: How many between me and the Minister? I report to the Director

• General. As I report to the DG, she reports to an Assistant Deputy
• Minister. The Assistant Deputy Minister reports to the Deputy and, of

course, the Deputy represents the Department with the Minister. So, what would that make it? Three. Unknown Speaker: Can we see the package just before you send it out? J: That would [advised 01:52:07] to the Minister. Probably not. Speaker 50: [crosstalk 01:52:11] I still believe, as we agreed earlier, that if it's not broken why fix it. So I really don't know, again, what the issues are in the Pedigree Act and nobody's come to me and said, "This is a problem." This investigation ‐ it's going to cost likely another 100,000‐200,000 over top

• f your salary. I don't want to see David's name come off that pedigree

because he might buy me a drink. So, I really don't want to see anything. Let's be honest. I think that the message from this group, which is a fairly large group representing a lot of associations, is saying, "We don't want to repeal the Act," but I don't even think we want to change it or investigate it. I don't see any issues with it, personally, but that's my point. We've already had a motion and a [gree‐vee 01:53:14], well other than two abstains, or one. One against. I would like to know if anybody has issues with the Act and want it changed, because I don't think there's anything to change and it would save John a lot of trouble to meet with all of these groups. [crosstalk 01:53:36]. I don't want some of Patrick Duffy's money. I guess if we had to hire somebody we've got a mayor in Toronto who might be looking for a job. Speaker 51: The other thing is, the meetings down the road are going to be industry‐ funded meetings. They're not going to be government‐funded meetings. They'll fund your salary but everybody that's involved in it are going to be digging money out of their pockets to deal with this, that you haven't given us a reason that it's broken and needs to be fixed. There's hardly a thing that you've said on this that indicates that it's really broken, other than.... Speaker 52: That's why I said, "Tell us what you think [crosstalk 01:54:30]" Tell us. Then we'll go back to you and say, "This is what we think about it."

A0050000 Page 43 of 46 Unknown Speaker: Stacy over here. Speaker 53: [inaudible 01:54:37] that group that I don't really think is interested in

• amendments. If we're forced to go that route, how does the [you‐spee‐

see 01:54:] look, constitutionally? How do we set up that meeting? J: I have to phone and ask him. Or send him an email. Whichever he found easier. In the back here? Speaker 54: I think the one thing that we have to keep in mind is for the government to be responsive and respect its citizens, it does need to ask citizens what it thinks, from time to time. Since the Act is 25 years old, I think it is very responsible of the the Department to ask the different associations, "What do you think, what is your opinion, and should we do any change?" If the answer comes back, "No, we want to leave it the same," we have given our duty as citizens, our answer. If we come back and say, "We think we should do some amendments," then that should be what they go with. I think it is responsible for the Ministry to say, after 25 years, "What's your opinion?" We always say that we aren't able to give our opinion. This is one of [inaudible 01:55:54]. Speaker 55: One of the things that's been mentioned, and a lot of us in industry are talking today about this... The one thing that hasn't been mentioned, there may be part of, reason that you're all looking some of this is the ability or lack of ability to acquire employees who can actually function properly within the APA

• Act. You have people right now who are very good employees. They have

long familiarity. Some have gray hair. What I'm saying is, we all know how hard it is to attract capable, efficient, knowledgeable staff. Is this also one of the things you guys are facing in your department, or not? J: I don't think so. Speaker 55: I know some of the other federal departments have had [crosstalk 01:56:44] directors and they're just... You're pulling your hair out in some areas because it's so hard to find the skill set.

A0050000 Page 44 of 46 J: We can find the skill set but we have trouble is trying to pay for the skill

• set. You can find the skill set. It's not been our experience that whenever

we've gone to improve, that we couldn't find people with the background we were looking for at that minute in time. If we had to go out and recruit against the Animal Pedigree Act and we went looking for someone with a degree in animal science, maybe a Master's in animal breeding and the background there somewhere, I'm reasonably confident we could find one. Despite all of our aggravations, maybe not a bad place to work. We used to pay better than we do and the benefits maybe were a little bit better back in the day but we're still competitive. I think we offer, actually, an opportunity for folks to come and make a difference. It's hard. Recruiting staff has not been my problem. Having a budget to pay them is a whole other issue. If we do get authority to go we normally have a pretty good pool to pick from. We close to 4:00 here yet David? Unknown Speaker: You not all warm up? J: No we just got to get going in to the [inaudible 01:58:02]. As I said, I'd love to discussion [day‐by‐the‐week 01:58:06]. It's one thing. I don't get a chance to visit with people near enough and then, secondly, a whole bunch of people came here and told me it was great. Something I don't ever get. Speaker 56: Who's responsible for [in‐si‐case 01:58:16] Mr. Ritz? Two years ago I was talking to my [inaudible 01:58:26]. I asked him why I wasn't allowed to export to the United States. He said it is [employee‐check 01:58:40] Mr. Ritz and my [inaudible 01:58:42] happens to [inaudible 01:58:45] Mr. Ritz's right hand man and he didn't even realize that you weren't allowed to export to the United States. J: It depends on the issue as to who's responsible for getting [inaudible 01:58:58]. The market access issues that you're referring to here, likely related to Scrapie, I'm guessing, going south of the United States. You'd see actually a bit of a team there. We have a whole group that deals with

• trade. They would need to speak with the veterinary capacity that's in the

Food Inspection Agency. All of that note gets rolled forward to the Minister, to his attention.

A0050000 Page 45 of 46 If you think about the breadth of issues that the Minister has to deal with in the agriculture and agri‐foods sector, that he might not know something about a particular issue at a minute in time, not to be

• surprising. If we were here for a discussion on horticulture and special

crops and the advantages they provide to the Canadian economy and the value of flower exports from Canada, I'm not your man to talk to. I don't know anything about it. That breadth of opportunity or [inaudible 01:59:08] issues that are in the Department, that's why we have a fairly large department to handle that. Speaker 57: John, I just wanted to say, I think our discussion on the Animal Pedigree Act has run its course. On behalf of those associations that are incorporated under the Animal Pedigree Act that are not part of CLRC, we definitely want to thank Dan and Ron for allowing us the opportunity to be part of this afternoon for this fruitful discussion. John, we really want to thank you for coming out from Ottawa and actually being able to get a tremendous affirmation from everyone today in terms of the Animal Pedigree Act and the support, that we believe, is an pretty important foundation upon which we act each and every day, whether we're [peat 02:00:30] administrators or whether we're members of the associations and the people out there breeding and making this stuff and move

• forward. So, thank you very much, both organizations, for letting us be

part of today and [grabbing 02:00:40] a fruitful and robust discussion. J: Alright, well if all y'all done. Again, there's a phone number and an email address there and I would [crosstalk 02:00:58] and continue to visit on where we're going and what not. We're happy to talk to anybody. [crosstalk 02:01:04] In terms of the presentation itself, I'm going to make a copy to Ron and he'll send it out [crosstalk 02:01:21]. Everybody will have [inaudible 02:01:23]. Speaker 58: Just before everybody leaves I'd like to thank all of the associations. Both members of CLRC and other associations that were here today. Thank you for coming out. I'd like also to thank very much, John, and sorry for putting him on the spot a couple times, but we do appreciate Agriculture Canada, Dave, he's an excellent assistant to us and we work very closely. Thanks everybody for coming out. We hope you enjoyed the lunch and please drive safely home.

A0050000 Page 46 of 46 I guess, legally, we were supposed to adjourn the CLRC meeting, so I'd like to motion [crosstalk 02:02:20] Unknown Speaker: No, we have to announce when our AGM is next year. Speaker 58: Just a quick announcement. Next year's AGM will be April 11th in Ottawa. [crosstalk 02:02:33] I adjourned. Unknown Speaker: As long as you have their names...